Hello America,
My name is Tony Whitcomb and I am the Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I have created Expotera, as well as this Blog, to let the good, honest and hardworking Citizens of this Country know that the Revolution has now begun.
Power To The People!!

Sunday, December 28, 2014

This sermon was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
at Ebenezer Baptist Church, on Christmas Eve, 1967.

By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
EcoFlourish.com
December 28, 2014

This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race.

We have neither peace within nor peace without.

Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them
by night.

Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous
possibilities.

And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will
toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream
of some utopian.

If we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power.

Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete.

There may have been a time when war served as a negative good
by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the very
destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even
the possibility that war may any longer serve as a negative good.

And so, if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that
mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative
to war and so let us this morning explore the conditions for peace.

Let us this morning think anew on the meaning of that Christmas
hope:

"Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men."

And as we explore these conditions, I would like to suggest that
modern man really go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence,
its philosophy and its strategy.

We have experimented with the meaning of nonviolence in our
struggle for racial justice in the United States, but now the time
has come for man to experiment with nonviolence in all areas of
human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international
scale.

Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth,
our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.

Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and
our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long
as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world.

Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to
live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as
fools.

Yes, as nations and individuals, we are interdependent.

I have spoken to you before of our visit to India some years ago.
It was a marvelous experience; but I say to you this morning
that there were those depressing moments.

How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with one's own
eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night?

How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with ones
own eyes thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalks at
night?

More than a million people sleep on the sidewalks of Bombay
every night; more than half a million sleep on the sidewalks
of Calcutta every night.

They have no houses to go into. They have no beds to sleep in.

As I beheld these conditions, something within me cried out:

"Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?"

And an answer came: "Oh, no!"

And I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country
we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food; and I
said to myself:

"I know where we can store that food free of charge? in the
wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God's children in Asia,
Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go
to bed hungry at night."

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.

We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied into a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

We are made to live together because of the interrelated
structure of reality.

Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in
the morning without being dependent on most of the world?

You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over
for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander.

You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands
of a Frenchman.

And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the
morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American.

And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese.

Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast,
and that's poured into your cup by a West African.

And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at
the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker.

And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning,
you've depended on more than half of the world.

This is the way our universe is structured, this is its
interrelated quality.

We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize
this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

Now let me say, secondly, that if we are to have peace in the
world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation
that ends and means must cohere.

One of the great philosophical debates of history has been
over the whole question of means and ends.

And there have always been those who argued that the end
justifies the means, that the means really aren't important.

The important thing is to get to the end, you see.

So, if you're seeking to develop a just society, they say, the
important thing is to get there, and the means are really
unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there?

They may be violent, they may be untruthful means;
they may even be unjust means to a just end.

There have been those who have argued this throughout history.

But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere
recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means
represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and
ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because
the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

It's one of the strangest things that all the great military geniuses
of the world have talked about peace.

The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace,
Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were
akin in seeking a peaceful world order.

If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that
Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace.

And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace.

Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam,
President Johnson talks eloquently about peace.

What is the problem?

They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek,
but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant
goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends
must cohere because the end is pre-existent in the means, and
ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive
ends.

Now let me say that the next thing we must be concerned about
if we are to have peace on earth and good will toward men is
the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life.

Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.

And so when we say "Thou shalt not kill," we're really saying that
human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the
world.

Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of
smoke from a limitless smoldering.

Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be
respected as such.

Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere,
we will be fighting wars.

One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may
be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese
are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our
brothers; and one day we've got to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.

But in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile.

In Christ there is neither male nor female.

In Christ there is neither Communist nor capitalist.

In Christ, somehow, there is neither bound nor free.

We are all one in Christ Jesus.

And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality,
we won't exploit people, we won't trample over people with the
iron feet of oppression, we won't kill anybody.

There are three words for "love" in the Greek New Testament;
one is the word "eros."

Eros is a sort of esthetic, romantic love. Plato used to talk about it
a great deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for the realm
of the divine.

And there is and can always be something beautiful about eros,
even in its expressions of romance.

Some of the most beautiful love in all of the world has been
expressed this way.

Then the Greek language talks about "philia," which is another
word for love, and philia is a kind of intimate love between
personal friends.

This is the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well, and those whom you like on this level you love because
you are loved.

Then the Greek language has another word for love, and that
is the word "agape."

Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship.

Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward
all men.

Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.

Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in
the human heart.

When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because
you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love
them because God loves them.

This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies."

And I'm happy that he didn't say, "Like your enemies," because
there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like.

Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can't like anybody who
would bomb my home.

I can't like anybody who would exploit me.

I can't like anybody who would trample over me with injustices.

I can't like them.

I can't like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out.

But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than liking.

Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward
all men.

And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle
for racial justice.

We can't ever give up.

We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class
citizenship.

We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige
of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not
in the process relinquish our privilege to love.

I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen
hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens'
councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate,
myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great
a burden to bear.

Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most
bitter opponents and say:

"We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force.
Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all
good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust
system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral
obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and
we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children,
and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour
and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as
you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda
agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit,
culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we'll still love you.
But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer,
and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom
for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that
we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double
victory."

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must
finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe
that all reality hinges on moral foundations.

Something must remind us of this as we once again stand in the
Christmas season and think of the Easter season simultaneously,
for the two somehow go together.

Christ came to show us the way.

Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified him,
and there on Good Friday on the cross it was still dark, but then
Easter came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that
the truth-crushed earth will rise again.

Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, "No lie can live forever."

And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace on earth
and good will toward men: let us know that in the process we have
cosmic companionship.

In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington,
D.C., and talked to the nation about many things.

Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation
about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today
that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it
turn into a nightmare.

I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare,
just a few weeks after I had talked about it.

It was when four beautiful, un-offending, innocent Negro girls
were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through
the ghettos of the nation and saw my black brothers and sisters
perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast
ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing
to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty.

I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black
brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable
outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their
disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that
problem.

I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war
in Vietnam escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisors,
sixteen thousand strong, turn into fighting soldiers until today
over five hundred thousand American boys are fighting on Asian
soil.

Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted
hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a
dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life
moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you
go on in spite of all.

And so today I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see
that they are made to live together as brothers.

I still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this
country, every colored person in the world, will be judged on the
basis of the content of his character rather than the color of his
skin, and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human
personality.

I still have a dream that one day the idle industries of Appalachia
will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will
be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the
end of a prayer, but rather the first order of business on every
legislative agenda.

I still have a dream today that one day justice will roll down like
water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God.

I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more.

I still have a dream today that one day the lamb and the lion will
lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and
fig tree and none shall be afraid.

I still have a dream today that one day every valley shall be exalted
and every mountain and hill will be made low, the rough places will
be made smooth and the crooked places straight, and the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

I still have a dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn
the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers
of pessimism.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will
be peace on earth and good will toward men.

It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and
the sons of God will shout for joy.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Pastor, Activist, Humanitarian, and Leader in
the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of Civil Rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

Friday, December 26, 2014

From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1967 Book "Where Do We Go
From Here: Chaos or Community?"

By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Friday, December 26, 2014

In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out:

There are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the
United States.

Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive
from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects
white and Negro alike.

Up to recently we have proceeded from a premise that poverty
is a consequence of multiple evils: lack of education restricting
job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and
suppressed initiative; fragile family relationships which distorted
personality development.

The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes
be attacked one by one.

Hence a housing program to transform living conditions, improved
educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities,
and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were
designed.

In combination these measures were intended to remove
the causes of poverty.

While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have
a fatal disadvantage.

The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis
or at a similar rate of development.

Housing measures have fluctuated at the whims of legislative
bodies.

They have been piecemeal and pygmy.

Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and entangled
in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions.

Family assistance stagnated in neglect and then suddenly was
discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and
superficial studies.

At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program
been conceived.

As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have
failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.

In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the
programs of the past all have another common failing -- they are
indirect.

Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the
most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a
now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

Earlier in this century this proposal would have been greeted
with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and
responsibility.

At that time economic status was considered the measure
of the individual's abilities and talents.

In the simplistic thinking of that day the absence of worldly
goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber.

We have come a long way in our understanding of human
motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system.

Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our
economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into
idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment
against their will.

The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today
by being branded as inferior and incompetent.

We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy
develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.

We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer
a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer
goods.

We have so energetically mastered production that we
now must give attention to distribution.

Though there have been increases in purchasing power,
they have lagged behind increases in production.

Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the
aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore
have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income.

They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger
society.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold.

We must create full employment or we must create incomes.

People must be made consumers by one method or the other.

Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned
that the potential of the individual is not wasted.

New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be
devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.

In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he
wrote, in Progress and Poverty:

"The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind,
the work which extends knowledge and increases power and
enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a
living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the
lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who
perform it for their own sake, and not that they may get more to
eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is
abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased."

We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education,
instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be
affected if poverty is first abolished.

The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their
own to alter housing decay.

Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use
in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes
inevitably will result from widespread economic security.

The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions
concerning his life and in his own hands, when he has the assurance
that his income is stable and certain, and when he know that he has
the means to seek self-improvement.

Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish
when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars
is eliminated.

Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the
guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure.

First, it must be pegged to the median income of society,
not the lowest levels of income.

To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate
welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions.

Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must
automatically increase as the total social income grows.

Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions,
the recipients would suffer a relative decline.

If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has
risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted
upward by the same percentage.

Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur,
nullifying the gains of security and stability.

This proposal is not a "civil rights" program, in the sense that
term is currently used.

The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds
of them who are white.

I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to
overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.

Our nation's adjustment to a new mode of thinking will be
facilitated if we realize that for nearly forty years two groups
in our society have already been enjoying a guaranteed income.

Indeed, it is a symptom of our confused social values that
these two groups turn out to be the richest and the poorest.

The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however miniscule, through welfare benefits.

John Kenneth Galbraith has estimated that $20 billion a year would
effect a guaranteed income, which he describes as "not much more
than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and
democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by 'experts' in
Vietnam."

The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our
distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress
our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and
upper classes until they gag with superfluity.

If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to
adjust this inequity.

It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent.

We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic
thinking.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.

It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at
the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they
had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the
abundant animal life around them.

The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total,
direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Pastor, Activist, Humanitarian, and Leader in
the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known
for his role in the advancement of Civil Rights using nonviolent
civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

If Christmas magic were real, America's political and business
leaders, the people with power and money, would speak on
behalf of the nation they've debased:

1. To Our Most Neglected Citizens

By the time the Koch brothers wake up on Christmas morning,
the wealth the two men will have accumulated throughout the
night could get a room for the night for every one of the
633,000 homeless Americans.

To Americans without a place to live, we apologize for a society
that allows almost all of its new wealth to be redistributed to
people who are already rich.

2. To Our Most Vulnerable Citizens

Eight years ago 2 out of every 100 children were homeless.

Now it's over 3 out of 100, a stunning 50% increase.

At the other end of society, elderly people are the most
unequal group among us.

Even though almost all the new wealth from 1989 to 2007 went
to people 55 and older, almost half of retirees report less than
$10,000 in savings.

3. To the "Broken Windows" Victims

The rationale is that punishment for trivial offenses will
discourage more serious crimes.

In New York City in 2012, the most common offense was drinking
alcohol in public, and 85 percent of the citations were given to
Blacks and Latinos.

Bank executives don't break windows.

Their crimes are a billion times worse.

Yet not a single banker was prosecuted for contributing
to the mortgage collapse.

4. To Our Students, the Newest Products of Business

Numerous studies have shown the importance of pre-school,
where social and emotional needs are first nurtured in a
peer environment.

But pre-school funding has been drastically cut.

In its place, business leaders see profits in our children, especially
if education can be automated, standardized, and commodified.

5. To Our Soldiers

We celebrate you in TV commercials, at football games, in holiday
parades. But we should be saying "sorry" instead of "thank you."

Bill Quigley puts the facts together for us:

One out of twelve Iraq/Afghanistan veterans with PTSD

57,000 homeless vets

Veterans much more likely than the general population to commit suicide

Unemployment much higher among post-9/11 vets

6. To the Victims of Our "Exceptionalism"

Greed knows no boundaries.

Our history of disregard for weaker nations seems never to end.

Drone strikes by 'pilots' at computer terminals have killed
hundreds of civilians in Pakistan alone.

The use of torture, once considered inhuman and un-American,
is now standard procedure to many of the people in power.

It gets even worse.

Thanks in part to the xenophobic emotions stirred up by
government and the press, the American public shows
widespread support for both drone strikes and torture.

How can we ever apologize for that?

7. To Those To Whom Nothing Ever "Trickled Down"

Perhaps the biggest scam in economic history is the contention by
Arthur Laffer, gleefully adopted by the super-rich, that lower taxes
on the wealthy would stimulate the economy and eventually lift the
fortunes of everyone.

But even though the wealth gap in our country is worse than ever
before, and despite ongoing present-day evidence that Laffer was
wrong, the big winners unapologetically continue their charade.

8. To People Who Believe in Society Over "Winner-Take-All"

One of our country's greatest needs is public infrastructure repair.

But the super-rich have little reason to support mass
transportation, as long as their pilots and chauffeurs
aren't significantly delayed.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that $8 trillion in new
infrastructure investment will be needed from 2013 to 2030.

This is the same amount by which U.S. wealth has increased each
year since 2011, but most of it has gone to America's richest 10%.

9. To the Victims of Free-Market Capitalism

After 35 years it's clear that poorly regulated free-market
capitalism doesn't work, except for people who know how
to manipulate the system.

We've been duped by Ronald Reagan's "Government is the problem,"
and by the "starve the beast" mentality that followed, which left
government underfunded and inept, and drove American citizens
into the clutches of the "invisible hand" of the free market.

Big business is largely unregulated.

It prospers through its partnership with Congressional members, who have fallen out of touch with average Americans.

Charles Koch, one of the major beneficiaries of government subsidies, had the temerity to say:

"This growing partnership between business and government is
a destructive force, undermining...the very foundations of our
culture."

10. To the People Who REALLY Built the Technology Industry

Economist William Lazonick says it well:

"The iPhone didn’t just magically appear out of the Apple campus
in Cupertino. Whenever a company produces a technology product,
it benefits from an accumulation of knowledge created by huge
numbers of people outside the company, many of whom have
worked in government-funded projects over the previous decades."

11. To Those Who Have To Defend the Best Government Programs
in U.S. History

It has been estimated that the richest 1% increased their wealth by
at least $3 trillion last year, far more than the budget for Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the entire safety net.

Social Security and Medicare have worked for decades,
keeping nearly half of our seniors out of poverty.

But these vital programs are continually under fire by many of
the same people who grabbed a chunk of that $3 trillion last
year.

12. To the Most Generous, and Least Appreciated, Among Us

These are lower-income households, making $50,000 to $75,000 per year, who give 7.6 percent of their income to charity, while those earning $100,000 or more give just 4.2 percent.

Good causes all, but of little value to Americans worried
about food and rent.

And If the Super-Greedy Refuse to Apologize and Make
Amends for Their Treatment of Less Fortunate Americans?

Let Visions of Occupy II Dance in Their Heads.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational
websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org),
and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and
Realities" (Clarity Press).

Sunday, December 21, 2014

The Forgotten Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Unlearned Lessons That Could Have Prevented the Century of War 1914 - 2014

By Gary Kohls
Lew Rockwell.com
December 21, 2014

It was exactly 100 years ago this month when the Christmas Truce
of 1914 occurred, when Christian soldiers on both sides of the
infamous "No Man’s Land of the Western Front" recognized their
common humanity, dropped their guns and fraternized with the
so-called "Enemies" that they had been ordered to kill without
mercy the day before.

The truth of that remarkable event has since been effectively
covered up by state and military authorities (and the embedded
journalists at the time) because they were angered (and
embarrassed) by the breakdown of military discipline.

In the annals of war, such “mutinies” are now unheard of.

The generals and (as well as the saber-rattling, chest-thumping
politicians and war profiteers back home) rapidly developed
strategies to prevent such behavior from happening again.

Christmas Eve of 1914 was only 5 months into World War I, and
the cold, weary, homesick soldiers found themselves not heroes,
as expected, but rather miserable, frightened and disillusioned
wretches living in rat and louse infested trenches.

Most of them had dreamed heroic dreams when they had signed up
to kill and die for King and Country a few months earlier, and hey
had been fully expecting to be home for the holidays.

Lower echelon officers on both sides of No Man’s Land, who were
suffering right along with the troops, allowed a lull in the war, just
for Christmas Eve.

Then they allowed the troops to sing Christmas hymns, and many
of the not-yet hardened soldiers started to recognize the humanity
of the demonized “other” that had been fingered as sub-humans
deserving of death.

And so the merciful spirit of the season came upon them; and they
disobeyed orders that forbade fraternizing with the enemy by laying
down their weapons and mingling with them in the area between the trenches.

Unknown to the higher echelon commanding officers, who were
enjoying good food and drink in their warm bunkers out of the
range of the artillery barrages and machine gun bursts, the grunts
on either side of the battle line suddenly sensed the stupidity of
killing someone that was just like them and who had never done
them any harm.

Many of the men that experienced the moment knew that
something deeply profound had happened: a spiritual experience
of mutual respect and love that epitomized their mutual Christian
upbringing and they refused to fight and kill when the war was
ordered to re-start.

Some soldiers were punished for their disobedience and many of
them had to be replaced with fresh troops that had been in the
reserve trenches the day before (corporal Adolf Hitler was among
the ones who did not experience the front line fraternization.)

The Christmas Truce of 1914 had come close to ending the futile
and ultimately suicidal war that destroyed 4 empires and an entire
generation of young men that had been bamboozled into joining up.

The truce had occurred at various places up and down the triple
parallel lines of trenches that stretched through France for 600
miles from Belgium to Switzerland.

The vast majority of the soldier that experienced the unauthorized
truce did not survive the war.

Many of them had just experienced a bloody battle that had killed
tens of thousands of troops on either side, with essentially no
territory being gained by either side, and they now knew that they
were in for a long war of attrition.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

A danger from the “war on terror” was always that it would
encourage the spread of an authoritarian U.S. state, ignoring
international law abroad and constitutional rights at home, a
process that is now growing more apparent with impunity for
both torturers and police who kill minorities.

By Nat Parry
Consortiumnews.com
December 16, 2014

The international fallout from last week’s long-delayed release of
the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 500-page executive summary
of its still-classified 6,000 report on CIA torture could hardly be
more intense, with calls coming from the United Nations, foreign
governments and the human rights community for prosecutions
of those who carried out or authorized the torture techniques
described in the report, including senior officials from the Bush
administration.

But judging from the self-assured comments of CIA and former
administration officials, there is no real concern over the possibility
of any criminal liability, a lack of accountability which has led to a
palpable arrogance among those who would be behind bars if laws
were actually enforced on an equal basis in the United States.

The above-the-law sense of entitlement was perhaps most clearly
on display in former Vice President Dick Cheney’s appearance this
Sunday on “Meet the Press,” stating that when it comes to using
torture, “I’d do it again in a minute.”

When presented with gruesome details from the Senate report on
torture – for example the newly revealed “enhanced interrogation
technique” of “rectal feeding,” i.e., anal rape – and asked for his
definition of what might constitute “torture” in a legal sense,
Cheney retorted that torture is “an American citizen on his
cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly
before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center
in New York on 9/11.”

Short of this rather high bar, nothing, by definition, that
the United States does to its detainees could conceivably
be considered torture.

Similarly, when asked about the large number of innocent people
(26 out of 119 CIA detainees, according to the report) who had
tragically been detained and tortured in error, for example
Gul Rahman – a victim of mistaken identity who was chained to
the wall of his cell, doused with water and froze to death in
CIA custody – Cheney stated indifferently that these individuals
essentially don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

The only problem that Cheney had was “with the folks that we
did release that end up back on the battlefield.”

“I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released
than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent,” he said.

Taken to its logical conclusion, Cheney’s reasoning would seem to
hold that it is preferable to indefinitely detain and torture a million
innocent people than to allow one “bad guy” to slip through the
cracks.

The implications of this logic are, needless to say, chilling (not to mention completely at odds with the legal principle of presumed innocence).

A Courtroom Defense

At times, watching Cheney make these cold rationalizations on
“Meet the Press,” it may have occurred to viewers that the more
appropriate venue for this interview would have been on the
witness stand of a courtroom.

After all, what Cheney was defending was not just controversial
policy choices, but clearly defined crimes of torture and murder.

Although he was sure to emphasize that “All of the techniques
that were authorized by the President were, in effect, blessed
by the Justice Department,” the fact remains that providing the
cover of law to a crime makes it no less of a crime.

This is a point that UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
and Counterterrorism Ben Emmerson specifically made last
week following the release of the report.

In a statement, Emmerson said, “The fact that the policies
revealed in this report were authorized at a high level within
the U.S. government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed,
it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.”

Emphasizing that all individuals responsible for “the criminal
conspiracy” described in the Senate report “must be brought to
justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the
gravity of their crimes,” Emmerson noted that “international law
prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have
engaged in acts of torture.”

Judging from Cheney’s arrogant display on “Meet the Press,”
however, there appears to be very little appreciation for the
niceties of international law such as its expressed prohibition
on official immunity when it comes to the crime of torture.

He seems to be quite confident, indeed, that official immunity is
unnecessary when there is an implied unofficial immunity that is
granted to public officials in the United States, this being the case
whether it pertains to CIA torture or police brutality.

Police Shootings

The same arrogance that Cheney is so casually displaying can also
be seen in the closely paralleled story of the recent spate of police
shootings and killings of innocent or unarmed African-Americans,
and the remarkable wave of demonstrations that has taken hold
across the United States in response.

With large-scale protests happening in most major American cities
over the past month – particularly since grand juries decided not
to indict the police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City – one might think that
cops would be extra careful these days not to come across overly
arrogant or obdurate.

This, however, would not be the case.

In response to the NFL’s Cleveland Browns’ wide receiver Andrew
Hawkins taking the field on Sunday wearing a T-shirt protesting
recent police shootings in Ohio – reading “Justice for Tamir Rice
and John Crawford” on the front and “The Real Battle for Ohio”
on the back – Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland police union,
claimed the shirt was disrespectful and he disparaged the very
idea of athletes holding opinions about anything other than sports.

“It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,”
Follmer said in a statement. “They should stick to what they know
best on the field.” In other words, keep your opinions to yourself,
boy, and just play football.

Follmer also demanded an apology from the Clevelend Browns
organization, which to their credit, the Browns did not extend.

Instead, the Browns fired back with a statement saying the
organization endorses the rights of players “to project their
support and bring awareness to issues that are important to
them if done so in a responsible manner.”

Hawkins also weighed in with comments to the media that
revealed, in fact, a deep knowledge and understanding of
what law and justice mean (or should mean), contrary to
Follmer’s condescending remarks.

“Justice,” he said, “is a right that every American should have.
Justice means that the innocent should be found innocent. It
means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment.”

His six-minute locker-room monologue to reporters ended with him
choking up while drawing a parallel between his own young son and
the tragic death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot by police in
Cleveland on Nov. 22 while holding a toy gun.

“My number one reason for wearing the T-shirt was the thought
of what happened to Tamir Rice happening to my little Austin.
And that scares the living hell out of me,” he said.

Protests and Fears

This genuine, personal fear of police violence is one that has
been widely expressed over the last several weeks of protests
taking hold across the country.

As Democracy Now’s Aaron Maté reported from New York’s “Millions
March” on Saturday, one of the dominant themes being expressed
on the streets was “a sense of not feeling safe, not feeling safe
themselves and not feeling safe for their loved ones, people of
color in heavily policed communities.”

Greene responded, “At this point, I know I’m a productive citizen,
and I don’t feel safe in my own community. I’ve never been in
trouble with law enforcement. And from what I’m seeing on the
news and what’s been going on, I really wonder: Am I next?
I’m wondering if the people in my community are next. We’re all
productive citizens, and we’re in fear for our life. We feel like it’s
open season on all minorities, and we want to know if we’re really
safe.”

Protester Nilan Johnson echoed these sentiments.

“I’m here because Americans, period, are being preyed on, right
now,” he said. “African-Americans are once again fighting for the
right to be human, and I think that’s horrible.”

Asked whether he feels, as a person of color, whether he is unsafe
in his community, Johnson replied, “That’s – I feel that daily, so
I feel that’s a preconditioned nature now. I feel threatened and
marked and cornered. And everybody here feels the same way.
And we’re trying to keep our humanity.”

If not a direct byproduct of the war on terror’s excesses and the
impunity that law-breakers at the highest levels of government
enjoy, this feeling of powerlessness, insecurity and injustice is
certainly closely related.

Indeed, as far back as 2007, civil rights leaders were drawing these
connections, in particular in a report prepared for the United
Nations entitled “In The Shadows Of The War On Terror: Persistent
Police Brutality and Abuse of People of Color in the United States.”

Since 9/11, the report explained, “there have been dramatic
increases in law enforcement powers in the name of waging
the ‘war on terror,’” while simultaneously, counter-terrorism
policies have “created a generalized climate of impunity for
law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of
what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control
over law enforcement agencies.”

This has led to an erosion of public discussion and accountability
with respect to the use of excessive force against people of color,
while at the same time, “systemic abuse of people of color by law
enforcement officers has not only continued since 2001 but has
worsened in both practice and severity,” according to the report.

As a representative of the NAACP put it, “the degree to which
police brutality occurs … is the worst I’ve seen in 50 years.”

Troubling Trend

Even establishment publications such as the Wall Street Journal
have noticed the troubling trend of rising police violence and its
connections with the war on terror.

As a feature article in WSJ put it in August 2013, “the war on drugs
and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a
new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop – armed to the teeth,
ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing
threat to familiar American liberties.”

This threat to liberties is compounded when the justice system
fails to hold accountable those who break the law and violate
people’s rights.

Whether it is Eric Garner in New York or Gul Rahman in
Afghanistan, the victims of injustice must have redress,
and “those who do wrong should get their due punishment,”
in the words of Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins.

As human rights advocates and civil libertarians have warned since
the early days of the “war on terror,” human rights violations of
terror suspects will eventually set the United States on a slippery
slope in which authorities deem it optional whether to respect the
human rights of anyone, including U.S. citizens.

At that point, anyone is fair game, and all of us, including
law-abiding Americans, may find ourselves at the mercy of
an unsympathetic authoritarian state.

Nat Parry is the co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Few subjects present an undisputable window into modern society
than the electronic version of reality that is dispensed through
television broadcasts.

This technology does not require interactive skills or critical
thinking acumen.

Just watch and fall into a daydream trance.

TV is the stealth killer that penetrates 114.7 million American
households.

According to the Nielsen ratings organization, the 2012 Universe
Estimate (UE), reflects a reduction in the estimated percent of
U.S. homes with a television set (TV penetration), which declined
to 96.7 percent from 98.9 percent.

Should this turn down suggest promise or is it merely a result
of internet substitution?

Researcher Melissa Melton cites the following in her article,
TV: Your Mind. Controlled.

“According to last year’s Nielsen report, the average American over
the age of two years old watches more than 34 hours of television
per week, plus at least three more hours of taped programming.
The report also noted that the amount of time we spend watching
television increases as we get older.”

This overwhelming intrusion into and over personal time and space
are often called entertainment.

Broadcasts that bill themselves as news or business shows claim to
provide useful information.

Yet, vast segments of the public are wrapped up in the childish
exercise of false hero adoration.

TV AS A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING TOOL

Television’s reporting on politics is miserable by any coherent
standard of journalism.

The business of television has little to do with an accurate chronicle
of events or the meaning of decisions and actions.

In order to understand the objectives of the content producers and
the basic purpose behind the cultural soothsayers, a review of Mind
Control Theories and Techniques used by Mass Media, which is a
well documented source that outlines how the mass media really
operates, is useful.

Examine the specifics and draw your own lessons.

“Mass media is the most powerful tool used by the ruling class to
manipulate the masses. It shapes and molds opinions and attitudes
and defines what is normal and acceptable. This article looks at the
workings of mass media through the theories of its major thinkers,
its power structure and the techniques it uses, in order to
understand its true role in society.”

The conclusion of this account is a valid summary.

“Lippmann, Bernays and Lasswell have all declared that the public
are not fit to decide their own fate, which is the inherent goal
of democracy. Instead, they called for a cryptocracy, a hidden
government, a ruling class in charge of the “bewildered herd.”
As their ideas continue to be applied to society, it is increasingly
apparent that an ignorant population is not an obstacle that
the rulers must deal with: It is something that is DESIRABLE
and, indeed, necessary, to insure total leadership. An ignorant
population does not know its rights, does not seek a greater
understanding of issues and does not question authorities. It
simply follows trends. Popular culture caters to and nurtures
ignorance by continually serving up brain-numbing entertainment
and spotlighting degenerate celebrities to be idolized. Many
people ask me: “Is there a way to stop this?” Yes, there is.
STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP AND READ A BOOK.”

Such a sensible solution as turning off the misinformation screen
is not an option for most of the typical dullards that think of
themselves as normal and informed citizens.

Society is populated with marginally functional and enthusiastic
compliant serfs.

Contentment is judged by actions not merely by sentiment.

An unquestioning and obedient populace perpetually distracted
from serious issues and unaware of comprehending the linkage
and ultimate aims behind world events, has always been the
goal.

The most profound use of these media techniques usually deal
with War & Peace: Media and War.

Stanford University publishes this account by Johnnie Manzaria &
Jonathon Bruck, Media’s Use of Propaganda to Persuade People’s
Attitude, Beliefs and Behaviors.

“Propaganda is so powerful because everyone is susceptible to it.
This is true as explained by Robert Cialdini, an expert in influence,
because people exist in a rapidly moving and complex world. In
order to deal with it, we need shortcuts. We cannot be expected
to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event,
and situation we encounter in even one day. We do not have the
time, energy, or capacity to process the information; and instead
we must very often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to
classify things according to a few key features and then to respond
without thinking when one or another of these trigger feature are
present (Cialdini 6). While this makes people highly susceptible to
a propagandist who understands persuasion, in general it is the
most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply
necessary. Additionally, propaganda includes the reinforcement of
societal myths and stereotypes that are so deeply embedded within
a culture that it is often difficult to recognize the message as
propaganda.”

The attitude that such practices are “most efficient form of
behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary”, is most
disturbing and certainly fits the mold of how TV operates.

The examples cited in this case study deal with foreign policy
issues. However, the summary on How to Defend Against
Propaganda, is worth a look.

“As a result of our increasing sophistication and to build our
civilization, we have created and environment so complex, so
fast-paced, and information-laden, that we must increasingly
deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago transcended.
Thus, from the case studies on how the media uses propaganda,
we can understand that the media does more than presentation
facts and information. The media has the ability to exploit
persuasive tactics to the specific definition of propaganda:
the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose
of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.”

Now ponder the disclaimer from this academia project:

“We are not advocating that propaganda is wrong; we have tried
to show, that overall it is usually helpful to respond to messages
mindlessly, and that the truly only way to defend against it is to
be more aware of the tactics being used.”

Also referenced in this study is Phil Zimbardo.

1) Be aware of the general perspective that others use to frame
the problem or issue at hand, because accepting their frame on
their terms gives them a powerful advantage.

2) Be sensitive to situational demands however trivial they may
seem: group norms, group pressures, symbols of authority, slogans,
and commitments. Don’t believe in simple solutions to complex
personal, social, and political problems.

3) In the end, it must be remembered that it is not enough to
dissent vocally — one must be willing to disobey, to defy, to
challenge, and to suffer any ensuing consequences of these
actions.

Relate this thinking to the television broadcasts and series
that occupy the gratuitous viewing of the general-public.

It may be functionally realistic not to expect current event
discernment from the mediocre crowd, but what motivates these
distraction deprived viewers from absorbing the brainwashing
message?

Escape from reality probably is the most adept answer.

Nonetheless, the dependency on relinquishing individual
responsibility and living under the principle of personal
integrity is too difficult for most.

The easy way out is to believe the junk fed from the TV screen.

Newspeak has become the dominant culture and TV is the chief
vehicle for spreading the lies and deceit.

Jack Blood provides a succinct summary in, TV = Mind Control
(Why do you think they call it Programming?)

“Once again the system is at work, knowing how easy it is to
control the minds of a dumbed down population that has been well
trained, and some might say socially engineered, to never question
authority, never think outside the box, never seek accountability
and never think for itself.

Easily manipulated, millions of people are conditioned to believe,
from a very early age, that anything emanating from television is
sacrosanct.

Thus, everything they watch is reality and anything they hear is
truth.

The Establishment has perfected its machination of propaganda,
creating the realities it wants into society, forming whatever truth
that will be of the greatest benefit, not to society, but to itself.

Whatever reality it wants to create and disseminate is quickly
absorbed by a population eager to feed off the mammary glands
of television.

The Establishment, the corporate world and government have for
years told us how and what to think, how to act, who to obey and
where to follow, condemning our minds to obedience, our lives to
conformism and silent acquiescence.”

Is it not time to make a clean break from this self-induced
imprisonment of images and sounds that spills out of the
television machine?

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About Me

My name is Tony Whitcomb. I am a Social Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I created Expotera and this Blog, to teach Corporate America and our Government, a few basic lessons in Ethics, Honesty, Macro Economics and Social Justice.
Power To The People!!